Archival SharePoint Sites

Owned by Dan Jakubiak
Last updated: Jul 02, 2024
4 min read

UConn faculty, staff and students should consider creating an archival, or historical data, SharePoint site when they have data that can be considered “archival”. This is data that you do not need to access in your daily work but need to keep on hand and easy to access. UConn users should consider keeping their day-to-day files in one SharePoint site and then placing their less-used files in a separate SharePoint location.

Why distinguish archival data?

Both OneDrive and SharePoint use the same OneDrive App on your computer. This app keeps your files up to date by keeping your computer synchronized with the SharePoint server (cloud). However, once users attempt to keep more than a few hundred thousand files in sync, the OneDrive app will slow down considerably.

Please see the following guide for more information on this issue:

If you find that you do not have “archival data”, you should consider splitting the data by user group. If one group, or department, has no reason to see the work of another group, instead of keeping all the data on one site and restricting access to certain folders, move the data to its own Library or Site as described below.

Option 1: Separate Document Libraries

The creation of Document Libraries is often related to creating unique permissions. Admins can restrict the viewing and/or editing of files by placing them in separate Libraries and then assigning certain users certain permissions. This nature of Libraries also creates an organized home for “archival” data. The syncing of SharePoint data to your computer is conducted per library. Therefore, users can opt out of syncing Libraries that do not contain daily-work files.

The benefit of creating an “archival” Document Library is having the data live on the same SharePoint site as the rest of the department data. All the data will live at the same URL and therefore be easy for coworkers to find.

A disadvantage of creating an “archival” Document Library is related to the storage limit that exists on all SharePoint sites. A SharePoint site is limited to 500GB, this includes all files in every Library in the site (working files and archive files). If exceeding this size is an expectation, please continue below.

Learn more about Document Libraries:

Option 2: Separate SharePoint sites

Like Document Libraries, the creation of additional SharePoint sites is often related to creating unique permissions. Admins are very selective of who they add to these additional sites; only those who should see the data are added to the site. This is true of the main site as well, adding only those who need to be added, but the secondary site is a smaller subset of the main site’s members. In the case of “archival data”, having a discrete site creates a clear, distinct location for the data. Users choose which SharePoint sites to sync to their computer. Therefore, users can opt out of syncing sites that do not contain daily-work files.

Learn how to create a new SharePoint site:

Option 3: All of the data needs to be accessible in one place

If you need to have access to hundreds of thousands of files readily available OR if you need infrequent access to large set of files, you may use the “Open in app” function. This method opens the file in its corresponding desktop application without needing to sync the entire Document Library with your computer.

Learn more about the “Open in app” function:

Transferring Data to the Archival location

The Data is already in SharePoint

If you have chosen to create an archive-specific Document Library or SharePoint site as discussed above, transferring data from your daily-working space to the archive is a simple task.

You may follow this guide to either move or copy your data into the archival location:

“Move” is likely the desired operation, as a “move” carries over all the metadata for the file as well (creation date, Version History, etc.). A choice of “Copy” will disregard this metadata and create a clean copy in the end location.

The Data is not yet online, only on my computer

If you have the data on your computer’s internal storage drive, or even an external storage device (USB drive or external HDD), you will use the website to upload the data.

  1. Open a web browser and navigate to your archival SharePoint location. You may use s.uconn.edu/sharepoint as a shortcut to your SharePoint homepage.

  2. Enter your SharePoint and navigate to the location you wish to add your new data to.

  3. There are two methods of adding files

    1. Click Upload in the top menu bar.

      1. Choose Files if you uploading files within a folder.

      2. Choose Folder if you would like to upload a folder and all of its contents.

    2. Open File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (macOS) and navigate to the files.

      1. Click and drag the files/folders into the web browser.

  4. In the web browser, you may click on the Uploading button that has the rotating arrows to check on the progress of the uploads.

Reach out to techsupport@uconn.edu if you have further questions.

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